Commentary on popular culture and society, from a (mostly) psychological perspective

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Just Try to Tame Those Brats

Thanks to a reader who told me about this column in the Chicago Tribune. It is unbelievable that our society puts up with any bratty behavior that children want to display--with no consequences. It's no wonder they grow up to be David Ludwig (and perhaps Kara Borden, who may or may not be a vicitm) who cannot hear the word no. The article describes a restaurant owner who put up a sign to ask parents to keep their children under control:

"McCauley, owner of A Taste of Heaven restaurant, was fed up with shrieking, bratty kids climbing on his fixtures or flopping on the floor blocking waitresses carrying pots of hot coffee, while the parents remained relaxed and infuriatingly indifferent."

The moms were outraged about the sign and decided to boycott the restaurant while the dads just kept their mouths shut. Contrast this to what happened when I was a kid. My parents brought their five kids to a place called the "Lazy Susan" which served the food in a buffet style set up. We did not know how to act and were putting our hands in the food, and not staying seated. The management came up to my parents, told them to take their kids out, leave and not come back. We were all embarrassed and never acted that way in public again (we were all under 8 at the time). Actually, my parents hired a babysitter and did not take us out as often.

The mothers boycotting the restaurant gives a clear message to kids that it is ok to act like a brat. Congratulations to these selfish mothers. Dads are afraid to speak up which is a shame--given that as the Nanny State takes over the raising of our kids--parents will have less and less say so in their upbringing.

This story does have a happy ending--the restaurant owner's business has tripled, despite the boycott and he no longer has to endure the endless shreiks of poorly behaved children.

Update: Dadvocate has a typical example of how spoiled children lose out by not being invited to hang out with family members.

31 Comments:

Call me cynical, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that Kara Borden urged her boyfriend to kill her parents. Others are coming around to that view also: http://www.hogonice.com/2005/11/one_more_thing_men_are_good_fo.html

The AP today reports that they were trading nude images of each other, and were also engaged in a clear sexual relationship:

I don't think you are cynical--I have thought this all along. Often young girls feed their boyfriends head with all kinds of abuses and faults of their parents until the boyfriend feels they are justified in doing something drastic. If this is the case with Borden--she should be held resposible.

Newspapers have no reported any specific evidence that David Ludwig was never disciplined or otherwise unduly spoiled. On the contrary, he grew up in a conservative Christian home that may well care more than average about child discipline and manners. His family lives in a quiet town in Amish country and they probably have less reason to worry than most Americans about accusations of being too strict. Reporters also said that Ludwig was perfectly polite in front of the judge and knew how to say "yes, sir", and "no, sir".

Of course, even a well-disciplined teenager can lose his temper and do something crazy.

But there is another factor in this case, exactly the same unusual factor as in the Ken Bartley schooling shooting. Namely, David Ludwig's parents left handguns just lying around the house, according to reports:

Gregory Ludwig consented to a search of the family's Lititz home when police began searching for the couple. Officers saw a number of firearms and gun cases in plain view.

The Ludwigs may simply have thought that their son can be trusted with loaded guns. Or they may have reasoned that since locks mean nothing to children bent on mischief, they might as well leave a loaded handgun lying on the kitchen table.

Is it any coincidence that this is another shooting committed with a father's handgun? Most fathers in America don't even own handguns. Some of them own rifles, instead. And many fathers who do own handguns lock them up. Most fathers are not like Gregory Ludwig in this respect. Nonetheless, its the fathers who leave handguns lying around — not rifles, specifically handguns — who often surface when children and teenagers are arrested for murder.

If nothing else, if I left handguns and ammo lying around the house, I wouldn't bother with child discipline. Never mind accusations of child abuse; I wouldn't want to get shot.

Greg, You place the blame on the guns and not the individual, and I cannot agree. Many murders are committed with other weapons such as knives - should we rid our homes of these items as well? Why don't you place any responsibility for the crimes with the person who committed the heinous acts?

As to the restaurant, I had five kids, and without exception when my wife and I would go to a restaurant the other patrons would praise the kids for being so well behaved.

How did we do it? Well, one factor is we expected them to behave, and thanked them when they did. The other factor is all of them knew that if they acted up the errant one would get to sit in the car with me (or mom) while everyone else enjoyed their meal with mom (or me). A minor sacrifice on our part, but worth it to have kids who knew the value of good manners.

I've got to agree with "brylin". Though access to a gun may make it a little easier (and less "hands-on" than a knife) to kill someone, it's that intent to kill that should matter above all else. Don't blame the gun. Don't blame the knife. Don't blame the hands around the throat. Blame the one doing the killing.

I absolutely don't blame guns. Guns are not alive and cannot carry blame for anything.

I blame individuals who leave handguns lying around in front of undependable teenage children. It is true that teenage children could in principle find handguns elsewhere, but why make it easy for them? What kind of home discipline is it if parents do not even take the simplest precautions?

Of course the first blame should go to David Ludwig himself. But after that, you should look at the way that he was brought up. After all, he was still a teenager, who still lived at home. Since he was home schooled, you can't in this case blame the school separately.

I also don't think that it's fair to blame his poor girlfriend. I have seen no reported evidence that she wanted him to kill her parents.

Sounds reasonable, but Ludwig's father did not do that. He left a handgun in reach of his adult child.

"Of course the first blame should go to David Ludwig himself."

And the second and third as well.

"But after that, you should look at the way that he was brought up."

Sure, if the parents did something stupid when they were (past tense!) raising their child, they take part of the blame. But that's a whole different ball of wax from leaving a grown man unsupervised, which is something that should be expected as a routine matter of course.

"After all, he was still a teenager, who still lived at home."

Not a practice I agree with, but it happens pretty often without incident and doesn't seem to drive people to murder.

18 years of age is a purely legal definition of adulthood. Psychologically speaking, people will start thinking and acting like adults either before or after this arbitrary date. If David Ludwig was still living at home and still home-schooled, and if he was dating a 14-year-old girl, then he was in the pyschological and social condition of a high-school senior. In other words, he was psychologically and socially still a teenage son and not an adult child. He was still being raised by his parents. Raising children is not an enterprise that you end abruptly at the 18th birthday just because that's the letter of the law.

So to get back to the original point, evidently part of what the Ludwigs taught their son, and were still teaching their son on the day of the murders, was a lax attitude towards firearms. It wasn't just that they owned firearms — there is nothing wrong with that by itself — their guns and ammo were also freely available in the house.

Let's accept that David Ludwig will probably get a multi-decade prison sentence, or life without parole, or maybe the death penalty. Since his case is famous, that is what will probably happen. Society can't say any more than that about his personal guilt, given that torture is illegal in this country.

This blog entry looked beyond the personal guilt of the teen, or the young man who just ended his teens. The title of this blog entry is, "Just try to tame those brats". That is a fine goal. I just don't see how you can tame "brats" if you also arm them.

Nope.If it were a lax attitude toward firearms, the kid would have failed to clean them, let them rust, taken them apart for work and lost a part, shot out a window by accident.They provided him with a lax attitude toward homicide.Or, more likely, they provided him with the idea that his wishes were paramount in all circumstances (spoiled) and finding that not so, he had no resources based on self-control and a history of not always getting what he wants.

Years ago, on a trip, we stopped at a rest area. The water in the fountains was ironish. I found my son getting into the soda we were bringing to our hosts. I freaked out."Do you know how many generations of Aubreys would have killed for what you think you're too good for? Do you know the kind of crap we've drunk from ditches and holes and muddy streams as if it were champagne? You think this is bad? How about a triple Halazone in a canteen? My son isn't going to be a wimp."It was probably overdone, but the point is sometimes you don't get what you want, even if my motivation was not entirely rational.More rationally, our kids were quite young when we started enforcing the dictum that, if they thought something was important, they needed to contribute. Blow up an air mattress for the lake? Sure kid, you get half done and I'll do the other half. Not interested? Neither am I.Both of them, closer to thirty than twenty-five, show strong abilities to plan for the future and defer gratification for future benefit.Not bad for having a mean ol' jerk for a father.

Although I did in my other post say that psychologists were sometimes just paid parents, I have to step back from that after reading the sad posting by DAdvocate. There are a lot of child and teen problems that psychologists don't know how to solve, but of those, some can be solved by good parents and some can't. Helen mentioned that there are parents who are simply overwhelmed by seriously disturbed children. That's very true, but there are far more parents who are not exactly overwhelmed, but are still stressed by family problems with no clear solutions. These include not only oppositional behavior, but also things like learning disabilities and depression.

It is a hundred times easier for parents to control externalities and abstractions than to influence their childrens' personalities. Up through the early teen years, it is not that hard to restrict access to things like alcohol, weapons, and pornography. It is not that hard to explain abstractly that racism is bad, that you should obey the golden rule, etc. But it is difficult or impossible to change aspects of personality, things like a short temper, or insolence, or lassitude.

So I just don't think that it's fair to automatically conclude that parents must have "spoiled" a child if the child is oppositional. Maybe they did and maybe they didn't. Parents of oppositional children can get it from both sides. One day it's that they spoil their children, the next it's that they are too strict and nasty.

I also think that it's sad if you can't enjoy your grandchildren. Talk about not stopping to smell the flowers. Sometimes that's just bad luck too; maybe the flowers are just rotting in the field. But more often it's a missed opportunity. If you can find any way at all to enjoy grandchildren, you should do it.

Thank you for your "right on" blog post. I is so sad that parents, regardless if they homeschool or not, have bought into the lie that it is "loving" to not dicipline their children. I believe it is just the opposite-it is hating-because their children are going to grow up selfish, childish and self centered -possibly doing something like David Ludwig and the boys at columbine-they don't understand consequences of their actions and are cold hearted. Firm discipline with lots of hugs, kisses and talk , helping the child understand the wrong is what is needed. As I tell my children the jails are filled with people whos parents either never disciplined them OR only disciplined them without the care and love behind it. It is not one without the other, they go together!

Actually, I'd argue that the Columbine killers knew exactly what the consequences of their actions would be, and that's why they put so much effort into causing as much carnage as humanly possible. The fact that they were deranged in their motivations (a massive pent-up amount of hatred and frustration) should not distract us from the fact that they planned out everything and acted rationally in the pursuit of those motivations. There's a difference between irrational, crazy teenagers and rational teenagers proceeding logically from crazy, irrational premises. The latter are infinitely more dangerous, both as teenagers and as adults.

What you are describing with the Columbine killers is the difference between affective killers and predatory killers. Affective killers kill at the spur of the moment for emotional reasons and predatory killers think, plan and carry out the killings like the Columbine killers did. However, these kids were left to their own devices and no one interfered with their irrational beliefs. One of the boys video taped himself laughing about his mother being oblivious to his weapons, mental state, etc.--so there was probably very little discipline or acknowlegement from adults that what they were thinking was irrational.